Dr. Earnhart and I were bemoaning the fact that the online 1867 edition doesn’t include cover shots (something like glamour shots, but a little more satisfying). I wanted to provide this link to another element of the vast Whitman Archive that supplements a little , though 1867 has many fewer images than other editions. But if you look just above 1867 in the history, you’ll also see Drum-Taps and Sequel to Drum-Taps as they were first published before getting stuck into Leaves in a most ragtag fashion. For those who really love history of the book/material artifacts/publishing history, the whole thing is definitely worth reading, or at least scrolling through, for its stellar images.

This IS a great find. I hadn’t realized it had all these illustrations (including examples of before-and-after crotch shots from the 1855 frontispiece, BTW). Folsom is also downright poetic about the 1867:

“On the title page [of _Sequel to Drum-Taps_ in the 1867] is a striking rendition of the title of “When Lilacs Last in the Door-Yard Bloom’d,” with the letters formed out of broken limbs and branches, the title visually alluding to the reconstruction the nation would be going through as it tried to form a union again out of the shattered fragments of the war. There is a poignancy to the small “and other pieces” that follows the “Lilacs” title on the title page, since “Lilacs” itself focuses on “the debris and debris of all dead soldiers” and on “the staffs all splinter’d and broken.” It’s as if Whitman’s typeface on the title page indicates he is making his poetry out of that splintered and broken debris.”